The present disclosure relates to wireless communication, and more specifically to dynamic adjustment of downlink and uplink traffic scheduling.
Wireless communications systems are widely deployed to provide various types of communication content such as voice, video, packet data, messaging, broadcast, and so on. These systems may be multiple-access systems capable of supporting communication with multiple users by sharing the available system resources (e.g., time, frequency, and power). A wireless network, for example a wireless local area network (WLAN) (e.g., IEEE 802.11), may include an access point (AP) that may communicate with one or more stations (STAs) or mobile devices. The AP may be coupled to a network, such as the Internet, and may enable a mobile device to communicate via the network (or communicate with other devices coupled to the AP). A wireless device may communicate with a network device bi-directionally. For example, in a WLAN, a STA may communicate with an associated AP via downlink (DL) and uplink (UL). The DL (or forward link) may refer to the communication link from the AP to the STA, and the UL (or reverse link) may refer to the communication link from the STA to the AP.
A wireless medium (e.g., one or more frequency channels) of the WLAN may be shared so that access to the medium is contention-based, such that wireless devices in the WLAN (e.g., APs, STAs, etc.) may compete for use of the wireless medium. For a contention-based medium, a wireless device that wins access to a channel may transmit over that channel during a transmission opportunity. In some cases, an AP that wins contention for a channel may schedule other wireless devices for communication over that channel during the transmission opportunity won by the AP. Other wireless devices that wish to transmit, but which are not scheduled by the AP, may wait until a subsequent opportunity to contend for the medium. The AP may schedule, during the transmission opportunity, a duration for the communication of downlink traffic and a duration for the communication of uplink traffic. The ratio of the downlink duration to the uplink duration may be fixed or static, but using the same downlink to uplink ratio may result in traffic delays and reduced system efficiency. For example, there may be more downlink traffic than uplink traffic, but the duration available for downlink traffic and the duration available for uplink traffic may not reflect that relationship (e.g., the downlink and uplink durations may be inappropriately proportioned for the imbalance in downlink and uplink traffic). For instance, an excessive amount of time may be reserved for uplink traffic and an inadequate amount of time may be reserved for downlink traffic. In such a scenario, downlink traffic may be delayed even though uplink traffic can be satisfied. In another example, uplink acknowledgments for downlink traffic may be delayed due to inadequate available resources (e.g., due to an inadequate duration available for uplink transmissions). For example, an AP may refrain from transmitting downlink traffic, even though there are adequate frequency resources, until the delayed acknowledgements have been received. Delay for the acknowledgments may result in delay for downlink traffic and reduce efficiency.